Mendocino County Today: Sunday 10/5/2025

Warming | Dorian Siegel | SYASL Dazzle | Peggy Gabehart | Phone Dude | Pet Chuck | AV Events | Whale Mural | Kelpfest 2025 | Harvest Moon | Book Sale | SF&NPR Hopland | Yesterday's Catch | Autocrat Populism | Married Looking | Forgive Them | Bopping Biden | Breadhead | Marco Radio | Good Books | Night Landscape | Dead Body | Portland Thelma | Low Wages | Energy Projects | City Approaching | Kamala Memoir | Clean-Cut Chuck | Never Understanding | Hurt Women | Fascism Appears | AI Actress | Modern World | Big Brah | Jane Goodall | Not Cat-Lady | Lead Stories | Brink Netanyahu | I'm King | Junior Sledding | Tolstoy Classic | Housework Wages | Transparant Cat | Berlin Opera | Stoner

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DRY AND WARMER weather is forecast for the next several days as a ridge of high pressure builds over the West Coast. The next chance for rain may be late next week as another trough approaches the region. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): 47F under clear skies this Sunday morning on the coast. Our forecast is for sunny skies thru Thursday then a chance of rain going into the weekend.

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DORIAN GABRIEL SIEGEL

Dorian Gabriel Siegel (53) passed away quickly on Sunday, August 24th, 2025, in Denver, Colorado.

He was born in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1972 to Esther Siegel and Brian Malone. As a youth, Dorian lived in Arkansas, Michigan, and Missouri before settling in California. In 1985, he, his mother, and adoptive father Spencer Brewer moved to Redwood Valley, where he attended local schools and graduated from Ukiah High in 1990. During his high school years, Dorian pursued many passions: taking flying lessons with Bill Bowen, building and flying remote control small engine planes, skiing, restoring his vintage 1960s Karmann-Ghia, and playing piano. He acted in Ukiah Player Theater’s ‘Man of La Mancha’, ‘The Manalogues’ and also performed boogie piano duets with his father Spencer in numerous concerts.

At 21, Dorian moved to Denver where he got his CNA license and worked as an attendant for the disabled. He joined the ADAPT Actions as an “able-bodied” attendant being part of the disability rights movement with his godfather Tom Olin. He met his future wife, Katy Angle, “across a sea of wheelchairs,” at a national action. Together they had a son, Gabriel Spencer Siegel, who was the love of Dorian’s life. The young family later returned to Redwood Valley for a few years, where Dorian, Spencer Brewer, and Michael Coughenour bought The Ivory Palace and founded the Ukiah Music Center a hub for Mendocino County musicians.

Dorian returned to Denver after a divorce, where he lived for more than two decades. He became well known in the community as a talented tile installer, a trade he practiced until his passing. He valued quality time with family spending winter vacations in California. Beyond his work, he was beloved for his generosity, humor, and open heart. “He literally had time for anyone,” recalled his friend Mark. Another shared, “Dorian was always fun, full of music, spirit and love!” Friends fondly remember his wild dancing at concerts and festivals, homemade pizza parties, and evenings of piano sing-alongs in his home. He had many friends, who cared deeply about him.

Dorian is survived by his son Gabriel Siegel, parents Esther Siegel and Spencer Brewer, numerous Siegel aunts, Brewer uncles, and many cousins across the country. A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, November 1st, at Ridgewood Ranch, south of Willits. The memorial begins at 11:00 a.m., with food served afterward.

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HOW TO WASTE $200K IN JUST FIVE YEARS

by Mark Scaramella

Despite posting a $6 million deficit for this year and maybe triple that next year, and flailing away randomly to reduce the deficit by an official policy of: We Hope A Buncha People Will Quit, Mendocino County still retains a $42k per year Sacramento lobbyist outfit called “Shaw Yoder Antwih Schmelzer & Lange,” formerly Dewey Billem & Howe. Under the radar Mendo has been paying these grifters for at least the last five years. Next Tuesday, SYASL will present a sales pitch, er, summary of their “accomplishments” to the Supervisors, as if Mendo’s mostly Democrat pols have any influence on what Sacramento Democrats are or more accurately are not doing.

Among SYASL’s wonderful achievements was “advocating” for Mendo for a state bill that “prohibits state moneys from being used to initiate or operate rail service, or for projects to rehabilitate an existing operation or facility, including a rail terminal, a railyard, a rail facility, and rail infrastructure, except as specified, on the [defunct] North Coast Rail Authority’s (NCRA), or Great Redwood Trail Agency’s (GRTA), right-of-way north of the City of Willits.”

Get it? This professional “advocate” claims to have somehow helped pass a bill that would prohibit any rail operations on the Great Redwood Trail/abandoned and decrepit right-of-way north of Willits. Prior to this “advocacy,” there was literally no chance of such operations, so this is like paying someone to help keep jumbo jets from landing in your backyard.

Besides being a large load of Mendo-funded public relations for this undistinguished lobbying outfit, Mr. Shaw and his self-promoting lobbyist pals also claim credit for advocating for a bill that “requires Caltrans to pay for relocating or removing the encroachment of a public utility district (PUD) with a ratepayer base of 5,000 households or fewer in the event of a future improvement to the highway and to notify the PUD at each stage of a project.” So, presumably, if Caltrans violates this requirement their PUD could be pulled. How this obscure imposition on Caltrans benefits Mendo remains a mystery.

If, like our supervisors, you still think this waste of $42k per year for “lobbying” might in any way benefit Mendo or be connected to what Mendo wants from our Sacto pols, consider that the lobbyists also list their opposition to AB 946 as one of their priorities. AB 946 applied to Chief Probation Officers in “any county with a population of at least 3,500,000 people.” (Hint: there’s only one county in the state with over 3.5 million people and that unnamed County is represented by Assemblyman Isaac Bryan who proposed the bill. The second most populous County is San Diego County with a population of about 3.2 million.) Apparently, LA County wanted the flexibility to be able to use County staffers besides juvenile probation officers for some probation officer tasks but they were embarrassed about wanting that so they didn’t want to be named in the bill. Whatever their motivation, it has nothing to do with Mendo. Fortunately for Mendocino County, the bill didn’t pass thanks to the advocacy of Mr. Yoder and his overpaid associates.

The rest of the lobbyist’s generic list of accomplishments are nothing but a boilerplate list of bills that passed or failed in the legislature in the last few years that they think align with Mendo’s ineffectual “legislative platform,” as if Mendo’s waste of $42k per year had anything to do with the passage or failure of these bills.

As a glimpse into the otherwise hidden level of dysfunction, upside down priorities and trivialities of the Democrats in Sacramento, the list compiled by “Shaw Yoder Antwih Schmelzer & Lange” has some residual, if negative, utility. But Mendo shouldn’t need to spend $42k per year of Mendo’s scarce taxpayer dollars to find that out.

Should you care to review the lobbyist’s other bogus Mendo claims go to the Board’s agenda packet at: https://mendocino.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx

(Mark Scaramella)

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PEGGY JEAN GABEHART

Peggy Jean Gabehart a resident of Green Valley, Arizona, passed away at her home, on August 27th, 2025, at the age of 92.

Peggy was born to Al and Ruth Wyse in Santa Monica, CA, on April 2nd, 1933. She grew up and attended school in the greater Los Angeles area, spending many years on the beaches of southern California. Upon graduation Peggy became a Radiologic Technologist and worked to support life-saving efforts in the Santa Monica Hospital Emergency Room, where she met her husband, Don Gabehart, and at other locations where she lived. They were married in 1955.

Peggy put her career on hold and became a mother with the birth of the first of her three children in 1956. Peggy, Don, and her children moved to Ukiah in 1973. Peggy was an active member and Club Officer of the Ukiah Women’s Golf Club in the 70’s and 80’s. Peggy contributed to the Ukiah Valley as an active member and Sorority Officer of Ukiah’s XI ZETA ALPHA Chapter Beta Sigma Phi International noncollegiate sorority. Peggy also worked in Ukiah supporting her love of all things chocolate at Henne’s Ice Cream and Candy Store.

While supporting her husband’s career moves, Peggy lived in Santa Monica, CA, Carson City, NV, Healdsburg, CA, Ukiah, CA, Cottage Grove, OR, and Green Valley, AZ. Peggy had a love of golf, outdoor gardening, and was a bird enthusiast. Peggy’s favorite organization to support was the National Audubon Society, which protects her beloved birds.

Peggy is survived by her brother Tony, and her children, Donna, Rick, and Tom, and her grandchildren. Peggy was preceded in death by her husband Don Gabehart, one of her grandchildren, and her parents. A Graveside Service will be held at the Russian River Cemetery District (940 Low Gap Road, Ukiah) on Thursday, October 23rd, 2025, at 2:00 P.M. for family and friends who wish to say their farewells.

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SCHOLARLY RESEARCH TODAY

Reach for your phone Dude
Type your question in the screen
Up pops your answer

— Jim Luther

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UKIAH SHELTER PET OF THE WEEK

Meet Chuck! This good looking dog likes long runs in the yard, stealing tennis balls, and pretending he doesn’t know what “sit” means (he totally does). He’s got energy for days, but don’t worry — once he’s zoomed around a few times, he turns into a very good boy — looking for cuddles and playtime. Fun Facts: • Chuck believes gravity is optional. (Got fences? Better make them tall!)

• He’s fluent in “wiggle butt.”
• He will 100% photobomb your family pictures.

Chuck’s turn-ons: Tall, secure fences; active humans who like adventures; treats (of course); belly rubs post-playtime. Chuck’s turn-offs: days without fetch; tiny fences (challenge accepted); people who don’t appreciate zoomies. All in all, with Chuck around, you’ll have the best mix of chaos, comedy, and cuddles you’ve ever had. Chuck is a Shepherd X, 1 year old and a very handsome 64 pounds.

To see all of our canine and feline guests, and the occasional goat, sheep, tortoise, and for information about our services, programs, and events, visit: mendoanimalshelter.com Join us the first Saturday of every month for our Meet The Dogs Adoption Event.

For information about adoptions please call 707-467-6453.

Our dog kennels are now open to the public Tuesday-Friday 1:30 to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 2:30 pm, closed for lunch Saturday from 1 to 1:30.

Making a difference for homeless pets in Mendocino County, one day at a time!

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ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE List of Events

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MARTA ALONSO CANILLAR mural painting

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NORTH COAST KELPFEST 2025, remaining Schedule of Events

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5

9-10 AM: Tour of Big River Kelp Recovery Project
Bluffs Above Portuguese Beach, Mendocino, CA
Host: The Nature Conservancy

10:00 AM – 4:00PM: Indigenous Food Festival and Market
Xa Kako Dile: Healing Gardens • Fortunate Farms, 15401 CA-1, Caspar, CA
Host: Xa Kako Dile: & Indigenous Community Initiatives

1:00 AM – 3:00PM: Field Station Open House
Noyo Center Marine Field Station • 32430 N. Harbor Dr, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Noyo Center for Marine Science

11:30 AM – 12:45PM: Kelp RISES Research Group Presentation
Noyo Center Marine Field Station • 32430 N. Harbor Dr, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Noyo Center for Marine Science

3:00 – 5:30PM: Regenerative Aquaculture Panel Discussion and Seaweed Happy Hour Reception
Noyo Center Marine Field Station • 32430 N. Harbor Dr, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Noyo Center for Marine Science
(Free Event — Suggested donation: $10)

5:00 – 6:30PM: Gray Whale Mural Celebration
North Coast Brewing Company (Sequoia Room) • 444 N. Main Street, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Alleyway Art Project & North Coast Brewery
Dinner & beer available for purchase

7:00 – 8:30PM: Film Screening: Sequoias of the Sea & The Last Forests Project (Short)
Coast Cinemas • 135 South Franklin Street, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Mendocino Film Festival

MONDAY, OCTOBER 6

4:45 – 7:00PM: Super Moon Urchin Harvest at Sunset
Greenwood State Beach • 6100 S. Highway 1, Elk, CA
Host: Nathan Maxwell Cann

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7

11:00 AM – 12:00PM: Noyo Harbor Icehouse Opening
South Harbor • 19101 S. Harbor Drive, Fort Bragg, CA
Host: Noyo Harbor Districts

https://www.northcoastkelpfest.org

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UNDER THE HARVEST MOON

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

— Carl Sandberg (1915)

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BIG BOOK SALE at the Mendocino Community Library on Saturday, Oct. 11th, from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm. New and old, fiction and nonfiction, mystery and crime, romances, children's books, puzzles, DVDs, and collectors' items. Bag of books for $5 after 2:00 pm. Corner of William and Little Lake in Mendocino. Be there or be square. Mark your calendars. The event of the year. Bargains galore. Can’t go wrong. Don’t miss it!

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Saturday, October 4, 2025

BRITTON AZBILL JR., 43, Ukiah. Controlled substance, assault weapon, felon-addict with firearm, possession of firearm without ID marking, ammo possession by prohibited person, probation revocation.

KAYLA CARVER, 30, Stewart’s Point/Ukiah. DUI.

JAMES CLAUSEN, 55, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, drinking in public, probation revocation.

RICKIE CURTIS, 52, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, disobeying court order, failure to appear.

MATTHEW FAUST, 50, Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol, drinking in public.

GORDAN HANOVER SR., 53, Ukiah. Controlled substance with two or more priors, probation violation.

JULIE JURRENS, 43, Ukiah. Child abuse with great bodily injury or death, domestic abuse.

JASMINE ROJAS, 26, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

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ORANGE IGNORANCE

Editor:

The alleged causal link between Tylenol and autism, the withdrawal of funds for cancer research and the campaign against vaccinations are further evidence for the ineptness of the current administration. The unanswered question is what is the motivation for this effort. The obvious surface answer is ignorance. But I would propose a deeper answer: populism.

Over its long history, this “ism” has wandered all over the map. But in its vagueness, it can be described as a division of two groups: one as an established elite and the other as “the common people.” Autocrats embrace it as a mean to maintain power. In the current context, the elite are the scientific groups, some from the medical establishment, some from the university research community. Power is maintained only if the independent judiciary rules against this funding denial in cancer research. Or in the Tylenol example, if the “common people” refuse to go along. Neither seems likely.

Ted Crowell

Healdsburg

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REAPING WHAT IS SOWED

Editor:

The assassination of Charlie Kirk was tragic, but it also reflected the toxic, violent culture he helped cultivate. Political violence is never acceptable. It violates both the law and basic human decency. But let’s not ignore the reality: we live in a country where weapons are worshipped more than children. I was disturbed by the size of the crowd at his memorial. So many mourned a man who built his career on division, cruelty and fear. While I won’t celebrate his death — no one should be killed for their beliefs — I also won’t pretend he was a victim of random misfortune. When your livelihood depends on stoking hatred and tearing people apart, eventually something breaks. “You reap what you sow” isn’t just a saying, it’s a warning.

When his wife, Erika, spoke, I recognized her grief. As a single mother, I’ve lived that kind of loss. And when she quoted Jesus — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” — it hit me hard. That grace applies to Charlie Kirk too. He didn’t fully grasp the damage his words could cause. Words matter. They shape minds, fuel movements and sometimes — tragically — they destroy.

Elaine B. Holtz

Santa Rosa

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HOW TRUMP BEGAN his masterpiece of doublespeak to the leadership of the American military, summoned to Quantico, Virginia, this week:

“We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day – every day, the guy’s falling down stairs – and I said, that’s not our president. We can’t have it. I’m very careful, you know, when I walk down stairs, I walk… very… slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just, try not to fall, ‘cause it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen, and it became a part of their legacy, you know. Walk nice and easy. You don’t have to set any records. Be cool! Be cool when you walk down, but don’t…don’t bop down the stairs. The one thing with Obama… I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs, I’ve never seen… da-da-da-da-teh-deh-bop-bop… I’ve never seen… he would go down those stairs, bop-bop, he wouldn’t hold on, he’d go down those stairs, I said, it’s great! I wouldn’t want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually, bad things are gonna happen, and it only takes one. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell. We had nothing.”

— Jeffrey St. Clair

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MEMO OF THE AIR: Whatever happened to never again?

Marco here. Here's the recording of last night's (9pm PDT, 2025-10-03) eight-hours-long Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA) and also, for the first three hours, on 89.3fm KAKX Mendocino, ready for you to re-enjoy in whole or in part: https://tinyurl.com/KNYO-MOTA-0664

Coming shows can feature your own story or dream or poem or essay or kvetch or announcement. Just email it to me. Or send me a link to your writing project and I'll take it from there and read it on the air.

Besides all that, at https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find a fresh batch of dozens of links to not-necessarily radio-useful but worthwhile items I set aside for you while gathering the show together, such as:

"Zipper-acker, firecracker, sis-boom-bah!" Oh yeah? Well, "P! A! R! K! Rah, rah, rah! Sis, boom, bah! Booma-lacka, booma-lacka! Boom, Park, boom!" Grrr, take this: "Ho rah ho roo! Deppa lah, deppa loo! Rah si ki yi! Hot cold wet-or-dry! Get there, Eli! Monmouth! Monmouth! Monmouth!" Hey, you kids settle down in there. https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/vintage_cheerleading_calls

Orson Welles on frozen peas. https://laughingsquid.com/animation-of-orson-welles-notorious-frozen-peas-rant/

Bibbidy bobbidy boop to /you/, sir. https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2025/09/poor-cinderella.html

And forever. Amen. https://theawesomer.com/could-we-survive-the-end-of-the-universe/783867/

Marco McClean, [email protected], https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

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“ALL GOOD BOOKS are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

― Ernest Hemingway

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BEFORE THURSDAY’S SURPRISE WIN, 49ERS QB SPOTTED DEAD BODY IN THE OCEAN

by Jeff Carillo

49ers fans are still reveling in the team’s improbable win against the Rams on Thursday behind quarterback Mac Jones, but reporting about what the former first-round pick experienced earlier that morning makes the victory even more shocking.

The Athletic senior NFL writer Dianna Russini reported Saturday that Jones woke up the morning of the game, went out to his balcony at the team hotel in Marina del Rey and saw a dead body floating in the water.

As the team boarded their bus to SoFi Stadium, players watched as investigators and coroners turned up at the marina, according to Russini. Lt. Daniel Vizcarra at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told SFGATE that the department received a tip from maintenance personnel who discovered the body while working in the water near the hotel. Upon arrival, an attempt to render aid by the fire department was unsuccessful and the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Vizcarra said the incident is still under investigation as of Saturday afternoon, and neither the deceased man nor the cause of death have been identified.

For now, it ends up being a wild anecdote that will undoubtedly add an extra layer to the lore of what was a stellar game from Jones, which saw him throw for 342 yards and two touchdowns to a receiving corps decimated by injury, all while spending a majority of the game hobbling and forced to eat bananas just to stave off cramping in his leg.

It’s the kind of performance that has now, unsurprisingly, launched the quarterback controversy debate around the 49ers among NFL talking heads across the country.

While the topic of whether the Alabama product is the right quarterback over injured starter Brock Purdy to lead the 49ers is still up for debate, there’s likely going to be no question over Jones’ physical, and now mental, toughness after this latest reporting from the Athletic.

And with Purdy’s toe injury now considered to be on a week-to-week timetable, Jones will likely get even more turns to build on his standout play so far.

The 49ers get a much-needed extended break to get healthy before their next game on Oct. 12 against the Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida, with kickoff set for 1:25 p.m.

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THELMA JOHNSON:

“I’ll tell you how bad Portland is, I went downtown to get my usual ‘Sanctuary Lake’ scented candles, but they were out, so I had to get ‘Rosemary & Sage’ instead. I’m 83 years old, I don’t have time for this.”

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TRUMP ADMIN PULLS FLOOR OUT FROM UNDER DOZENS OF CALIF. ENERGY PROJECTS

Cuts from the Department of Energy are meant to strip away more than $3 billion from California

by Stephen Council

Dozens of construction, education and clean energy projects in California are losing billions of dollars of combined federal funding, part of a sweeping cut from Donald Trump’s administration targeted at Democrat-run states.

The dramatic move yanks more than $3.1 billion of federal commitments across 79 grants around California, according to an SFGATE analysis of the Department of Energy’s “projects terminated” list and federal records of each grant. More than a third of the $7.56 billion the agency said it had cut across 321 grants was apparently money meant for California projects. It’s a huge slash that endangers thousands of jobs and dozens of scientific initiatives.

In a news release, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal Democratic critics, skewered one of the cuts in particular: $1.2 billion meant for a planned hub to produce hydrogen fuel in California, a project that has garnered more than $10 billion in private investment and is projected to create over 200,000 jobs. Newsom wrote: “In Trump’s America, energy policy is set by the highest bidder, economics and common sense be damned.”

These cuts further a few of the Trump administration’s aims. They’re a disinvestment in clean energy construction and research, as Trump’s DOE fights against the scientific consensus on climate change. They’re a rollback of Joe Biden-era federal awards. And, amid a bitter party feud over the federal government’s shutdown, they’re an attack on states that didn’t cast their electoral votes for Trump.

Just a few awards are being cut in red states, and projects in Texas and West Virginia that are nearly identical to the slashed California hydrogen grant aren’t losing their promised cash. Still, some of the districts where the California money and jobs would actually have gone voted for Trump last year — including Rep. Kevin Kiley’s eastern California district.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Russell Vought, the White House’s budget chief, wrote on X. He added: “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a longtime oil and gas executive, wrote in his department’s news release that many of the awards had been “rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration” and that the cancellations “protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy.” The news release noted that award recipients have 30 days to appeal the decisions and that some projects have already begun the appeals process.

To perform its analysis, SFGATE matched the award numbers from the DOE’s cancellation list with grant summaries on USASpending.gov, which shows how much of each promised federal grant had already been paid. The grants chosen for cancellation on the DOE’s list totaled $2.1 billion in promises, and around $130 million had already been paid out. After subtracting what had been paid and adding the additional $1.2 billion for the tranches of the hydrogen hub funding referenced in Newsom’s news release but not included on the cancellation list, the California tally of lost funds exceeds $3.1 billion. In most cases, the grants are being terminated with the lion’s shares of their promised money not yet delivered.

Planned by government bodies, utilities, tech and manufacturing companies and educational organizations, the California projects losing their funding vary widely in scope and in focus. After the hydrogen hub, the largest awards on the list were $630.6 million for California’s electrical grid, granted to the state Energy Commission; $500 million for a carbon capture and storage system at a large Kern County cement company; and $189 million for an Oakland company’s new, low-emissions cement plant.

Several of the cut projects were meant to pull in tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. There was $30 million earmarked for a battery system at a pediatric hospital in Madera, and the same total meant for biomass power plants in the Sierra Nevada. Southern California Edison, the Redwood Coast Energy Authority, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are each losing grants in the range of $48 million to $87.6 million.

At the low end of the cost scale, 59 of the listed grants to be cut in California were for sums below $10 million. Money is vanishing that would have gone toward assessing methane emissions at popular drilling locations, figuring out new ways to capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and store it, improving the recycling process for consumer electronic batteries and more.

It’s unclear which of the projects will successfully appeal, which can continue without federal funding and which of the schools, companies and government bodies might attempt litigation. Angelina Galiteva, the CEO of the hydrogen hub program, wrote in a news release that her project would move forward.

Still, California Sen. Alex Padilla called the funding cancellation “vindictive, shortsighted, and proof this Administration is not serious about American energy dominance.”

“California will not back down — we’ll keep leading on clean energy where this Administration has chosen to abandon American leadership,” he added.

The Department of Energy did not respond to SFGATE’s questions about the cuts, other than by providing the list of impacted grants.

(SFGate.com)

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KAMALA HARRIS’ MEMOIR SHOWS WHY THE DEMS KEEPS LOSING

by Lily Janiak

One reason to write a political memoir is to keep stumping, whether for a future race or out of lifelong habit. Another is simply to tell a good story — high in stakes and suspense, rich in exclusive detail, keen of insight.

“107 Days,” former Vice President Kamala Harris’ memoir of her truncated presidential campaign, seems to stem from both these urges.

The book, published Sept. 23, is equal parts boilerplate ad copy, shrewd analysis and illustrative image. In one chapter, the Oakland native, who was raised in Berkeley, might write — in words no normal human would use — of her “passion for small business.” Elsewhere, she compensates with something real, like when her team gave her Doritos during prep for her debate with then-former President Donald Trump, and she felt like she was “being handed a doggy treat.”

But the memoir, which devotes a short chapter to each day from the time former President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 race to Election Day, serves many other purposes as well. It helps mourn Harris’ loss and what the country’s suffered since then, it reminds us that our political present doesn’t have to last forever and it offers some lessons for would-be leaders of all stripes — though especially for the Democrats going forward.

Fittingly, on Sunday, Oct. 5, when Harris does an event for the book at the Masonic, the grieving and reenvisioning can be collective.

It’s foolish to try to read into a politician’s heart. But “107 Days” nonetheless helps illuminate Harris’ character by revealing what she thinks is safe or advantageous to reveal.

We learn, for instance, that she resented Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff for not planning something special for her birthday during the campaign, even though he’d already been campaigning for her for months. The chapter’s an effort to show how exhaustion affected their marriage, but Harris winds up looking like a grown-up who hasn’t realized that you should temper your birthday expectations when everyone in your life is already dedicating all their waking hours to your once-in-a-lifetime contest.

More flatteringly, the Harris who offered a candidacy of joy also shines through.

Whenever she was hustling up the steps of Air Force Two, she was thinking of “the comfy Uggs I kept on board.” Her instinct the night after she interviewed her three possible VP picks and had to make a decision? “I made a tasty rub and seasoned a pot roast.”

Some storytelling details are just as delicious. Right before she introduced the country to Tim Walz as her running mate, “Tim gathered us in a huddle, like we were his team in the locker room about to run onto the field.” And in a bizarro moment, not long after the assassination attempt on Trump, she called him, and he said quasi-nice things to her: “You’ve done a very, very good job … My only problem is it makes it very hard for me to be angry at you.”

If you’re looking for reasons Harris’ campaign messages didn’t lead her to victory, aside from the abbreviated timeline her team had to disseminate them, Harris herself might not be the best source. Still, “107 Days” does proffer some shrewd Monday-morning quarterbacking.

When Trump broadcast ads that said, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” she shares what her clear response ought to have been: “The pronoun that matters is ‘we’.”

Whenever someone asked her why she didn’t already accomplish her campaign promises under Biden, she should have simply said, “I haven’t done those things because I am not president — yet.”

At the same time, if some of her résumé-brandishing is cringey, as when she quotes positive reviews of her appearances, other bits of self-justifying are more instructive. She believed she couldn’t criticize Biden more, even though her staff kept reminding her of his low approval ratings, because she was still on his team and had to still be able to trust her in the situation room. She chose Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because she thought the latter might be frustrated by the role’s limitations:

“At one point, he mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision. I told him bluntly that was an unrealistic expectation. A vice president is not a copresident.”

That conclusion, perhaps unintentionally, has a whiff of hypocrisy. Throughout the memoir, Harris repeatedly complains of the Biden family’s treatment of her, even as she shares her nuanced belief that Biden seemed perfectly fit to govern, if not to campaign. Some of her gripes seem legitimate, like the one about receiving a scolding call from Biden right before her debate with Trump. But when she shares wishes that she would have gotten more of a chance in the spotlight as veep, is that really so different from what Shapiro was asking for?

(SF Chronicle)

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A CLEAN-CUT CHARLES MANSON on his wedding day in 1955.

This photograph captures Charles Manson as a young man on his wedding day in 1955, long before his name became synonymous with violence and cult manipulation. Dressed neatly in a suit beside his bride, he appears the picture of normalcy. Yet behind this image lay a troubled youth marked by crime, reform schools, and instability.

The marriage was one of Manson’s early attempts to establish a conventional life, but it proved short-lived. Within a few years he would be imprisoned again, setting him further down the path that would ultimately culminate in his notorious role as the leader of the so-called Manson Family in the 1960s.

This image is haunting not because of what it shows, but because of what history would later reveal. It stands as a reminder that even the most ordinary scenes can conceal the beginnings of far darker legacies.

Added fact: Manson married a woman named Rosalie Jean Willis, but while she was pregnant with their child, he was arrested for auto theft and sent to prison, ending the marriage soon after.

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“TIME HAS ITS REVENGES, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.”

― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

There's a lot of commentary about how much men have been hurt by feminism, but as a man, I'd argue that it has actually hurt women so much more. Most of the women I know, and those I see in public life, seem to be deeply confused and angry. This is not to let men off the hook, but I think women are in a bad place right now.

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WHEN A.I. CAME FOR HOLLYWOOD

by Maureen Dowd

In the immortal words of Emily Blunt, “Good Lord, we’re screwed.”

She was on a podcast with Variety Monday when she was handed a headline about cinema’s latest sensation, Tilly Norwood.

Agents are circling the hot property, a fresh-faced young British brunette actress who is attracting global attention.

Norwood is A.I., and Blunt is P.O.’d. In fact, she says, she’s terrified.

Told that Tilly’s creator, Eline Van der Velden, a Dutch former actress with a master’s in physics, wants her to be the next Scarlett Johansson, Blunt protested, “But we have Scarlett Johansson.” (Cue the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” music.)

All over Hollywood, actresses are cursing Tilly, her Pygmalion, Van der Velden, and the increasingly withdrawn men who prefer to be turned on by eternally youthful and preternaturally gorgeous A.I. replicas. (No Botox or Ozempic needed.)

And all over Hollywood, suits are licking their chops at the prospect of more malleable actors. “She’s not going to talk back,” one top talent wrangler told me dryly.

They may be alarmed by one A.I. actress now, but as the A.I. expert Nate Soares, a co-author of the best seller “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” explains, “A.I. is less like one actress and more like a puppeteer behind lots of different characters.”

Checking out Tilly’s image, Blunt was clearly nettled. “That is really, really scary,” she told Variety. “Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.”

I fear it’s too late.

Human connections have been eroding for some time. We’re all dwelling in Uncanny Valley now, staring into our personal screens, not sure what’s real or fake, to the detriment of talking, dating, reading, living.

We’re getting another jolt about how fast A.I. is advancing. Just this past week, we’ve been inundated with racist, juvenile videos posted by Donald Trump, mocking Democratic leaders as the government shut down. The president is wallowing in A.I. slop.

Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, debuted his Sora app, which creates alarmingly realistic videos of fake scenes. It could be TikTok with a lot more disinformation. You can use a text prompt to conjure terrorist attacks, election fraud, mass protests, war scenes and, no doubt, disturbing sexual scenarios.

“Increasingly realistic videos are more likely to lead to consequences in the real world by exacerbating conflicts, defrauding consumers, swinging elections or framing people for crimes they did not commit, experts said,” The New York Times reported.

The app will further erode truth, and comity. This, in a country where the president sets a horrible example promoting false narratives and fake videos, and where nearly two-thirds of voters believe we’re too politically divided to solve our problems.

Sora will certainly be used by some to justify rejecting real content as fake. “Until recently,” the Times story noted, “videos were reasonably reliable as evidence of actual events, even after it became easy to edit photographs and text in realistic ways. Sora’s high-quality video, however, raises the risk that viewers will lose all trust in what they see, experts said.”

Although many in Tinseltown are upset by Tilly and Sora, A.I. will most likely make swift inroads in a degraded Hollywood. Largely gone are the days of blazing movie stars and prestige mass-appeal movies. (Sydney Sweeney already looks suspiciously like A.I.) Now it’s Marvel, sequels, adaptations and streaming shows that feel as though they were written by an algorithm for consumption while scrolling on another screen.

“I get it even though I don’t like it,” said Lola Kirke, the actress and author of “Wild West Village,” essays about New York and her eccentric and creative family. “It’s a business, after all, and they have to keep up with the preferences and demands of the public, who are more used to watching face-tuned influencers lip sync ‘Real Housewives of New York’ sound bites for 15 seconds than actors telling stories over the course of three acts. Maybe, in some weird way, it will revitalize interest in film and TV? That’s me being optimistic — albeit in a sad way.”

The less optimistic view was provided by Jaron Lanier, a top scientist at Microsoft.

He said that a Hollywood studio chief was crowing about how great A.I. is because he wouldn’t have to pay “all these idiot producers and actors and lighting people and composers and writers and agents.” Lanier told him that studio chiefs would quickly become expendable, too, because everyone will serve at the mercy of “the big computer server at the center, and Silicon Valley will just roll right over you.”

While Lanier thinks a simulated character here and there is fine, he says it’s “urgent” to draw the line about “the difference between A.I.-generated stuff and reality-generated stuff, to have a system in which we know what’s real and what’s fake.”

He told me: “The problem with it is, if you make the whole world run by fakes and simulations, everybody becomes increasingly more dysfunctional. Everybody becomes alienated and nervous and unsure of their own value, and the whole thing falls apart, and at some point, it’s like civilizational and species collapse.”

That, readers, would be less than ideal.

(NY Times)

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DEVELOPMENTS IN BIG BRO-ISM

(Taibbi & Kirn)

Walter Kirn: The most intrusive thing they do is take you into a room and make you take your clothes off.

Matt Taibbi: How could that possibly be warranted, right?

Walter Kirn: In the age of all these electronic devices, in the age of TSA precheck and all these other manners of ascertaining your identity through biometrics and so on, they still can take you into a room and force you to take your clothes off in front of other people. And they do it. And I can only say that, Matt, in the last year or so, my own travel through airports has not been as easy as it used to be. Maybe I’m on the very light program or I was. It seemed to have ceased after I complained. I can tell you, as somebody who wrote Up in the Air, the novel, and that as a student of the behavior of everyone in an airport, from the people at the Cinnabon to the security guards, that it is a hostile environment now.

It’s a preview of a state that we don’t want to live in generally and they have all sorts of tactics, tricks, and as you say, secret protocols that remain secret and cannot really be appealed or even, how can I put it, investigated by the target. It’s a weird zone of futuristic intrusion surveillance, randomness and Orwellian customized rulemaking.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, it’s like bespoke, right?

Walter Kirn: Yeah. It’s the rulemaking. Bespoke algorithmic persecution.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And again, you’re right. There’s no way to appeal it. Some people can though. So Jeanne Shaheen’s husband gets off the list. Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t even find out if she’s on it, right? The only way she finds out is, if there’s an election and that somebody is forced to turn over the documents. So nobody knows what lists they’re on. As you say, you’ve had difficulty. I’ve had the quad S designation on the ticket, the same thing that happened to Tulsi. I’ve had that happen to me three times in the last year. And that’s never happened to me before. Who knows what that means, right? But that’s the problem, is, now, we’re all thinking about this and-

Walter Kirn: The telescreen is not always on, even in 1984, remember?

Matt Taibbi: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: In other words … Or the camera behind the telescreen is not always on. It’s merely the notion that it can be turned on and the memory of when it was that keeps you, what? Disciplined. We’re not threats to anything. Has there been a journalist who’s committed an act of terrorism in the skies in the history of the United States?

Matt Taibbi: I can’t think of one. I can’t think of any journalists who … Yeah, I can think of people who would be threatening from an odor standpoint, but-

Walter Kirn: Have we had any problems with rogue Congress people yet?

Matt Taibbi: Not yet. No. But how amazing is it that there were at least four members of Congress that were on this list and those are just the ones we know about.

Walter Kirn: But what’s so amazing about this is that, by pretending this is rule-based, they forget the rules, which would rule out any of these people that you just talked about. Congressman, probably not. A journalist, probably not. Never in fact. Also-

Matt Taibbi: Well, what if the travel that got you on the rule was travel that you did as a member of the military, right? You would think that that would disqualify you from the program, but it doesn’t. And the larger thing, which I think is going to get to some of the other issues we’re going to talk about today, is that this is part and parcel of an American government that increasingly is in the business of just gathering information on people for its own sake, not to build cases, not to do anything but just to do it, right? And so it dovetails with … I did a story a couple of years ago about an FBI agent who got pulled off a child porn detail to go sit in a van outside some person’s house who was just suspected of being a J6.

If there was a crime, it’s a misdemeanor, but they’re just sitting there watching and recording what the person does, what the movements are. And what is that? Why do we want the FBI doing that stuff? What is it?…..

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RIP JANE GOODALL (April 5, 1934 – October 1, 2025)

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JOYCE CAROL OATES:

“Always a sigh of relief when the shooter turns out NOT to be a childless cat lady.”

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LEAD STORIES, SUNDAY'S NYT

Israel at War With Itself

Israel and Hamas Prepare for Talks on Trump’s Plan to End Gaza War

For Netanyahu, Trump’s Nod to Peace Puts Him in a Tough Spot

The Next Steps for Hostages in Gaza

Not All National Parks Remain Open in the Shutdown

Push for Military Coverage of I.V.F. Faces Challenge in Congress

Judge Blocks Trump’s Deployment of National Guard in Portland, Ore.

Federal Agent Shoots Motorist in Chicago Amid Rising Tension Over Immigration

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NATANYAHU ON THE BRINK?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night that Israel was “on the brink of a great achievement” and that he hoped to announce soon that the remaining Israeli hostages will be coming home from the Gaza Strip.

In a short speech in which he repeatedly rebuked those who have long demanded an end to the conflict in hopes of a hostage release, Mr. Netanyahu insisted that Hamas was only willing to free the hostages now because of the military and political pressure that he and President Trump had applied.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF RFK JR.

by John Kenney

(“By promoting suspicions about the institutions he oversees, critics say Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is joepardizing public health. He says he is pursuing transparency.” — The Times.)

Upon waking each morning, I open my drapes, remove the tinfoil over the windows, and stare directly at the sun for 30 to 45 minutes until everything goes white and I can no longer see, which is when you know it’s working. I’m not exactly sure what’s working, but I know it is and I know it’s been proved.

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Cheryl loves to drive, so I’m the passenger most days. But not in the passenger seat. Not a lot of people know this, but the inside of the car is more dangerous than the outside. So what I’ve been doing for some time is lying on a sled I’ve attached to the undercarriage of the car. People ask, “Isn’t that dangerous?” and I laugh, because it’s ten times safer than inside the car. And they say, “No, seriously, that seems incredibly dangerous,” and I’m, like, “You don’t get it.” I literally have the study on my office desk, or maybe in a drawer, and maybe it’s a new study and it’s out of Yemen and it disproves every “safety” feature that companies like Volvo claim is good for you. Yes, the Swedes are oddly beautiful, but they are known liars about safety.

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Now, instead of coffee, I make a smoothie with protein powder, kale, wheatgrass, honey, a banana, two AA batteries, and a few pumps of WD-40. Several new studies have shown that petroleum distillates are hugely beneficial to humans. (I have the studies here somewhere.) Not only do I notice increased suppleness in my joints, but the hinge on the basement door no longer squeaks when I touch it, and on some days I’m able to tune in to a baseball game through my fillings.

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The word “aspirin” comes from the German word meaning “what an asshole I am for taking this.” That’s true, and I have a document, in German, that proves it. The document is written in High German, I’m told, and not Swiss German. I recently learned that there is no such thing as Swiss German. Which I believe, as I once flew to Zurich and guess what? We never landed. You know why? Zurich doesn’t exist. How can it exist if no one is there and no one is speaking a language that doesn’t exist?

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I was recently on a podcast called “That’s the Craziest Fucking Thing I’ve Ever Heard But It Might Be True", and I was asked if I had any regrets. I really have only two. One is that I wish the United States had won the Second World War, which we didn’t, and I can prove it with a report I have but don’t have with me at the moment. The other regret is that I wish I’d gone to Yale and sung in the Whiffenpoofs. But, then, I recently learned that singing is the leading cause of heart disease in America and we really have to stop singing, especially the schoolchildren.

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Lunch is a lie. So I don’t eat it. There’s no proof that there is “lunch.” People say, “Wait, what are you talking about?” And I say, “I think it’s pretty obvious.” Look right here. I have the study. Not on me, but I have it. I may have left it under the car or in the sled, but here’s what I know for a fact. There’s breakfast, and we have proof of that, and there’s dinner, and we have proof of that. But there has never been proof of lunch. And people say, “Seriously, what the fuck are you even talking about?” And I feel bad that they don’t get it, so what I’ll do sometimes is I’ll go into the break room at Health and Human Services and someone will be eating and I’ll hold up their sandwich and ask, “What is this?” And it’s usually this kid named Warren, and he hates it when you touch his food, but I’m the Secretary, so whatever. And I say, “Warren, what is this?” And he’ll say, “My lunch?” And I’ll say, “Warren, what is this?” And he’ll say, “A ham-and-cheese sandwich?” And I’ll say, “Don’t be stupid, Warren. What even is lunch? Are Hall & Oates lunch or a band that never should have split up?” And he’ll just stare at me, but deep down I think he understands what I’m saying because by this point he’s slowly backing away and crying a bit and then asks if he can go home for the day, which he can’t. Because what even is home?

(The New Yorker)

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I STAND HERE IRONING

by Dorothy Sue Cobble

Many of us spend an enormous amount of time at home. Remote work persists, despite the return-to-office push. Some of us are full-time parents and caregivers, even homeschoolers. For others, home can be a place of unimaginable cosseting, with or without TikTok videography. No matter its nature, home remains central to our lives. But how do we characterize what goes on there? Is the home a refuge from the ravages of capitalism or a center of its maintenance? How do those who do the physical and emotional work of the home—still largely women—experience it, and what do they deserve in return?

Studies of housework tend to stay within narrow disciplinary furrows, focusing on either the economic or the affective, the exploitative or the gratifying. Yet in many years of teaching, I’ve found students quite sensitive to the complexities of housework and the surround-sound approach necessary for understanding it. When asked if the large, luminous female figure at the center of François Bonvin’s 1858 oil painting ‘Woman Ironing’ was being exploited, they routinely generated a research agenda that academics have yet to undertake. In a recent class, for example, the mostly female undergraduates led off with speculations about the social relations in which the work was embedded, though they didn’t put it that way. Whose shirt was it? they wanted to know. A lover’s? An abusive husband’s? Or perhaps the shirt of a generous neighbor who left some eggs or fixed a chair?

The garments hanging just beyond the woman’s reach prompted them to wonder how much ironing she faced every day. Was there time left to care for herself and others? Was she rewarded fairly?

No one thought her a domestic slave, as Lenin once described housewives. Most assumed she was a servant — though the vase of red flowers gave them pause. Only a few guessed that she might be the painter’s wife. (Elisabeth Dios, Bonvin’s first wife, worked as a laundress to boost their meager household income.) Still, housework was work, the class agreed, and doing it could elicit an unsettling mix of feelings: exhaustion, pride, boredom, pleasure, fury.

I can imagine them eagerly puzzling over the depictions of housewives and housework from ‘Wages for Housework,’ the Marxist feminist movement launched in 1972 to win recognition and income for unpaid domestic work and caregiving in the home — and in so doing, to undermine capitalism. Yet until recently the movement’s ideas were not apt to be taught, and its radical strategies for transformative change in how we live and what we value have been largely overlooked. Emily Callaci has now rendered these paradoxical and polarizing views in all their daring originality and prescience. A social as well as intellectual history, ‘Wages for Housework’ is, as the book’s UK subtitle puts it, “the story of a movement, an idea, a promise.”

(London Review of Books)

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L’OPERA É MOBILE: RIGOLETTO IN BERLIN

by David Yearsley

Opera thrives on competition as much as collaboration—on who can sing higher, louder, longer, more passionately; what production can seduce or scandalize most abundantly; which company can hoard the most prestige while staving off bankruptcy the longest.

Sung drama was born as a regal pursuit in Italy around 1600, but was soon taken up by northern European monarchs and cities eager not just for the entertainment but also the glamor they brought.

These days, Berlin has three major opera houses of international standing. That’s an impressive cultural density for a city with a population just under 4 million. Although the three companies operate under the financial management of a single foundation, comparisons between them and perhaps also rivalries are inevitable, especially during times like the present, when funding belts are being tightened around their substantial operatic girths.

The Deutsche Oper in the western borough of Charlottenburg was founded in 1912 when the district was an independent city, the richest in all of Prussia. That lofty status demanded an opera house to compete with neighboring Berlin’s, which had been founded by Frederick the Great in 1740 and stood in the city center just across the Spree River from the Royal Palace.

These two opera houses were—and still are—just four miles distant from one another along Berlin’s main east-west boulevard, which begins under the name of Unter den Linden in front of the downtown Staatsoper (the State Opera; formerly the Court Opera) and a while after running the Brandenburg Gate changes its name to Bismarckstraße in honor of the German Empire’s first Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The Iron Chancellor preferred house concerts to opera houses.

When the Nazis took over, Joseph Goebbels became head of the Deutsche Opera and Hermann Göring was installed atop the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Such seizures of cultural power are now familiar to Americans since Donald Trump’s “election” as chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, earlier this year. Not surprisingly, the German opera in Berlin-Charlottenburg became, along with the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, the essential operatic stage for the Nazi regime.

Both Berlin opera houses were badly bombed during the war. The East Berliners reconstructed theirs, whereas the West Berliners tore theirs down and replaced the original neoclassical colossus with a modernist box. There’s not a column or pediment to be seen, just big square windows on the sides and a massive pebble-studded wall with block capitals reading DEUTSCHE OPER BERLIN facing onto Bismarckstraße. Bookending the foyer’s mezzanine level are two very cool boxy bars.

I love the place not just for the décor but even for its penchant for risk. The first opera I saw here was the notorious 2003 staging of Mozart’s Idomeneo directed by Hans Neuenfel, then the baddest of bad boys of German Regietheater—this so-called “Director’s Theater” marked by often outlandish interventions in the original texts: alternate beginnings, middles, and/or endings; diverse acts of gratuitous sex and violence; and a commitment to offending strict constructionists and other traditionalist as often and as aggressively as possible. Neuenfels certainly achieved those goals at the close of his Idomeneo by parading the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed on spikes (spoiler alert: none of these prophets appear in Mozart’s original) to a hailstorm of Pfuis and Boos from the auditorium. Fearful of retaliation from Islamist extremists, the Deutsche Oper cancelled the production but then regathered its courage and resolutely brought it back, now with metal detectors at the entrance heightening both security and dramatic intensity. This season, an exhibition dedicated to “Skandal!” can be surveyed in the foyer.

The house Unter den Linden got a redo to the tune—make that, mighty chorus— of 400 million Euros, the final tally on the reopening in 2017 reflecting massive cost overruns. The Deutsche Oper was dedicated back in 1961 and asking for 20 million for its own makeover—operatic pocket change.

As these radically different sums suggest, since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Staatsoper garners more prestige and public money than its Charlottenburg counterpart. Over the last decade, ticket sales at the Staatsoper have been more robust than those at its Charlottenburg counterpart, which is, on average, one-third empty.

I’d say that at last Friday’s musically powerful, theatrically unfocused but still enthralling performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto, a bit more than half of the seats were taken. Frederick the Great’s solution to flagging audiences of the 1770s, his capital city impoverished by a succession of wars that he had started, was to command his royal regiments to fill the place up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump soon deploys the National Guard in like fashion as indifference and even disgust build for his “pro-faith” and “pro-family” menu at the Kennedy Center.

What the Charlottenburg public lacked in numbers last Friday, it made up for in enthusiasm. A dozen rows back from the orchestra pit, we sat among a group of partisans—many of them probably family relations—of the young and dynamic conductor Daniele Squeo, an Italian who studied in Germany. Right from the start of the overture, with its portentous brass maledictions troubled by timpani and throttled by string tremolos surging up to quaking tutti chords, Squeo led the virtuosic Deutsche Oper orchestra with accuracy and flexibility, fire and feeling. When the conductor joined the cast in the long series of bows—not curtain calls, since there was no curtain—his supporters Bravo-ed, clapped and stamped more loudly than ten of the aforementioned timpani. A particularly exuberant man next to my daughter whistled so loudly that he inflicted what she was sure was permanent hearing loss on her left ear, prompting her to enjoin me to make the following plea to the Deutsche Oper: Please, please add a “no whistling” clause to the opening public announcement asking cellphones to be turned off and forbidding photography and recording during the performance.

The Italian faithful also raised an exalting sforzando to soprano Nina Solodovnikova. She sang the role of the ill-fated Gilda with intimate nuance, surety and emotional reach that made you almost believe this opera’s outlandish and deeply misogynistic proposition that her character would give her life for the bluff Duke of Mantua even after she’d learned that his declarations of love were all opportunistic lies. That bel canto cad was sung with barrel-chested bravura and unwavering cynicism by tenor Andrei Danilov. (Presumably, both Solodovnikova and Danilov have publicly repudiated Putin and his Ukraine War in order to be allowed to appear on the Deutsche Oper stage.)

As Gilda goes to her death, the reprise of the work’s most famous aria—indeed one of the most famous in all of opera— “La donna é mobile” rang out from off-stage in Danilov’s haughty, heart-piercing tones, not as a triumph of manly prowess but as a self-inflicted critique of opera’s mechanisms of predation.

Our nearby Italian cohort also raised the roof—flat, as any modernist structure worth its concrete must be—for the Spanish-American baritone, Daniel Luis de Vicente, whose rich, sometimes grainy, often restive and always resonant baritone whipsawed between rage and pathos. His was a devastating embodiment of a best-intentioned paternalism that fatally confuses overweening control for honest love. This Rigoletto didn’t need the hunchback—the traditional stigma of this pitiable, and pitiless jester but, like blackface for Verdi’s Otello, is banned from the modern opera stage—to elicit both loathing and compassion.

Berliner Jan Bosse directed the production, with the sets by Stéphane Laimé. The theatrics began even before the overture, with the chorus already arrayed on stage in raked seating that meticulously mirrored the real auditorium on the other side of the pit. The seats, handrails and even the 1960s veneer of dark wavy grain on the walls had all been mimicked in the service of the by now hardly original gag of holding up a mirror to the audience.

These chorus-members-as-operagoers fiddled with their phones, flirted, dozed, thumbed through their program books, and sipped at champagne. Just before Squeo made his way to the podium, a latecomer rushed onto the stage from the wings to fight past a dozen disapproving knees on the way to his seat.

When Rigoletto joined the party on stage after the music had at last begun, he was costumed as a humpless glitter-bunny. The Duke wore cowboy boots and a western shirt and mirrored sunglasses. The professional hitman Sparafucile (Tobias Kehrer) was a blinged-out, tattoo-scarred, hoodied thug, whose cavernous baritone would have echoed its dark menace as fatefully had he been wearing a pink tutu and ballet slippers, rather than biker pants and combat boots.

But the stage-on-the-stage gimmick remained just that. It never yielded insight, contradiction, or even a whiff of useful alienation. By the time the evening had reached the final scene, where Rigoletto opens the body bag and discovers his own daughter lying dead before him, killed by the hitman he had hired to murder Gilda’s seducer, the on-stage seating had already been elevatored away. At last, the drama came into minimalist, moving relief. I’d been expecting Bosse to have the meta-audience stay on either to drool over the melodrama’s grizzly crux or maybe just plain ignore it while gorging TikToks on their phones.

Two-and-a-half hours earlier, as I had stood at the end of our aisle waiting to take my seat before the performance began, two elderly women, surely long-time season-ticket holders, came through the doorway to our section. As soon they caught sight of the setand the chorus/audience looking directly back at them from the stage, one of the ladies snorted contemptuously and said loudly: “Schon wieder blödes Regietheater!” — Damn Director’s Theater again! Probably the pair had been at Neuenfel’s Idomeneo twenty years ago, so they couldn’t have been that surprised at what they saw. Their disapproval was probably just ritual venting.

Still, I tried to reassure them: “You can always just close your eyes.”

Next: the third and youngest of Berlin’s opera houses puts on Jesus Christ Superstar at the Nazi Airport.

(David Yearsley is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest albums, “In the Cabinet of Wonders” and “Handel’s Organ Banquet” are now available from False Azure Records.)

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